It was the first sitting of the Mysore City Corporation (MCC) council on Thursday after the elections to the urban local bodies were held in March.
The newly-elected members were administered oath. While a majority of them took oath in the name of the Constitution or god, there were a few who broke the convention. M.S. Balasubramaniam, who is better known as ‘Snake Shyam’ (he has rescued nearly 30,000 snakes and released them into the wild), took oath in the name of the environment. Another councillor, T. Ramu, took oath in the name of pourakarmikas. Shaukat Pasha took oath in the name of the former Minister and Congress leader the late Aziz Sait, while councillor R. Lingappa took oath in the name of goddess Chamundeshwari. Sathish Swamy (Sandesh Swamy) took oath in the name of his father, Sandesh Nagaraj (MLC).
Split in SDPI
The Socialist Democratic Party of India (SDPI) fought bitterly against the Congress in the elections and positioned itself as a party that cared about minorities. But, when it came to voting, one of the SDPI councillors, Reshma Jabeen, voted for the Congress, while the other, S. Swamy, abstained. The BSR Congress, however, voted for the Congress.
He didn’t want to bottle it up
Even before the council could commence business, a councillor raised his voice about a “pertinent issue”. He “expressed regret” that the drinking water bottles distributed to the councillors had labels in English and not Kannada. Though a majority of the councillors ignored it, there were a few who took his objections seriously and peeled the label off.
